66 



S. V. WOOD ON A NEW DEPOSIT OF PLIOCENE A&E 



fossiliferous clav rests, but abandoned some ten years since. In 

 1881, clay being required for the puddling of a dock wbicb was 

 then being constructed at Penzance, the excavations were at his 

 instance renewed, the upper (yellow and unfossiliferous) clay, into 

 which the blue clay yielding the shells passes upwards, being found 

 suitable for this purpose ; since which the pits have again fallen 

 into disuse. It was during this renewal of the excavations that 

 Mr. Whitley visited them, obtained the shells mentioned in his paper, 

 and recorded the sections in his note-book from which the one I 

 herewith give (fig. 1) is taken. Mr. Cornish exhibited at the Jubilee 



Fig. 1. — Pit near St. Ertli Vicarage, from the JSlote-BooTc of 

 Mr. NicJiolas Wliitlei/, of Truro: 





1. Surface-soii. 



2. Clayey loam full of angular stoBes pitched at all angles, but mostly upright, 



3 to 5 feet. (This is probablv the formation described under the letter y in 

 my ISTewer Pliocene Memoir in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xsxviii. p. 720, 

 mider -vrhich the ancient beaches of the south coast are buried, and which 

 has a great extension in Cornwall.) 



3. Stones cemented with oxide of iron, &c.., 6 to 12 inches. 



4. Tenacious yellow clay with unrecognizable fragments of some bivalve shell 



passing down into — 



5. Blue clay, very irregidar, 3 to 5 feet (and more in places), and containing 



marine shells. 



6. Fine sand, base rot exposed, but described by the workmen as having gravel 



and rubble at bottom, resting on rock. 



meeting of the Falmouth Polytechnic Institution in 1882 some 

 specimens of the shells, but the first (and only) scientific notice 

 which has been given of the bed is a short paper by Mr. jSTicholas 

 Whitley, published in the Transactions of the Eoyal Geological 

 Society of Cornwall for January 1882, entitled " On the Evidence 

 of Glacial Action in Cornwall," in which he incidentally refers to the 

 St. Erth bed, and gives a list of ten species of MoUusca that he had 

 obtained from it, and had submitted to Mr. G. P. Sowerby, Junior, for 

 identification. 



On my writing to Mr. Whitley, and pointing out to him that he 

 had been mistaken in referring the bed to Glacial age, he not only 



